


Happily Ever After

by Redlance



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: AU Week, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 22:23:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3954010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redlance/pseuds/Redlance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because fairy tales are bedtime stories and sometimes happy endings aren’t just black and white.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happily Ever After

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: So as per usual, this isn’t done in time for AU week. Hopefully I’m still within the boundaries of AU week to post, then I’ll finish it up at a later date. So all mistakes are... well, they’re still in here. Sorry about that. In my defence though? Pitch Perfect 2.
> 
> No really, that’s all I have.

She has all the finery a girl her age, a girl of her  **breeding** , could ask for. Extravagant gowns, diamond encrusted jewelry from all ends of the realm. Her bed sheets are made from only the finest silks and she has a handful of servants whose sole job is to make it for her every morning. She has a hundred hair pins, each one more outlandish than the last, and the claws of her private bathtub are made from solid gold. She’s never wanted for anything a day in her life, not food or water, not any of the things that those she would one day rule might long for. She is a Princess and she has been raised as such.

 

Only she never did ask for it. For any of it. She doesn’t care about gowns or jewelry, or which people of note will be attending the next royal ball. She remembers faces and names under the guise of a political mind, but she doesn’t care about that either. She has a fantastic memory for the mundane and underwhelming. Her mother has spent years trying to shift her attitude on such things, as if a heavier necklace might finally break what she sees as stubborn resolve. But Myka isn’t stubborn, she simply isn’t what her parents want her to be.

There are times she wishes she could change that. When she sees the disappointment in her father’s eyes and the way he flushes when she says something he finds unbecoming. For a long time, she had wanted to change. Had tried so valiantly to become the daughter, the someday ruler that he so desired, but to no avail. While Myka longed to create change in the kingdom, to help her people, she would gladly go without the profligate peacocking of her peers. It turned her stomach to see the way her family’s fortune was squandered while people fell to starvation outside the castle walls.

“It is the nature of things.” Her father would say. “We are here because it is our birthright. We deserve to be here and they…” And Myka would stare at him, wide eyed and searching. “They do not. They’re different from us, Myka.” But it was always the same.

She is loved. Knows this without a shadow of doubt, but her father’s love has always felt distant and her mother looks at her like she wishes Myka was someone else. But she is loved. She is their daughter.

She just isn’t the favourite.

Tracy is everything they could want in a future Queen, missing only the birthright that would give her such an opportunity. Myka had been born first, then her sister a few years after, and from the moment she laid eyes on Tracy – and more importantly her parents with Tracy – she knew that they would finally get the daughter they wanted. And how right she had been.

Tracy says all the right things at the exact right moment. A socialite of the highest order, she can slip her way into any conversation and within seconds make those she’s talking to forget that she hasn’t been there all along. She’s flirtatious, though not overtly, and had a line of suitors requesting her hand by the time she was sixteen. Their father held them back with an authoritative wave of his hand, insisting she wasn’t yet ready when really he simply wasn’t ready to let her go. She was the apple of his eye, the brightest star in his sky, and against all of Myka’s best efforts, it still hurt. And when it became too much for her to bear, she would snatch a piece of parchment from her desk and scribble down all her sorrows before attaching it to the leg of one of the birds that lived outside her window. She didn’t know where the birds went when they weren’t perched beyond the pane, but whenever they came back her sorrows were gone and somehow she felt lighter. Free for an instant. It was a miraculous feeling and one that she could find only in that moment, and whenever Peter paid her a visit.

Sir Peter of Lotimer was the son of King Arthur, ruler of the kingdom to the north and political acquaintance of her father, and she had been friends with him since they were children. He stood tall and broad at the shoulders, dark hair neatly cropped and a winning smile forever adorning his features. It settled her, to see him, put her at an ease she rarely felt outside of his company.

“Let’s go steal some of those little pastry things with the jam inside them.” He also did not act like any of the other princes she had encountered over the years. He did have more of a head for politics that she did, thought it was not for a lack of understanding on her part. He knew that she could run rings around him if she chose to play the game. Perhaps that was what Myka liked best about him; he didn’t expect things from her. They had spent the first three years of their friendship climbing trees and smearing their clothes with as much dirt and grim as possible, until her father had deemed such activities as childish and forbade Myka from continuing in such a manner. She was a lady, one who had her father’s reputation to uphold. All Pete had ever wanted from her was friendship. And apparently their cook’s pastries.

“If my father catches me, or you for that matter, in the servant’s quarters again, he’ll have me locked in a tower for the rest of my life and you dragged out by your ear.” She said, gazing coolly over her shoulder at him from where she stood beside the arched window of the library. It was Myka’s favourite room in the entire castle and she at least had that in common with her father. A love of the written word. He’d collected and acquired many of the books himself over the years, others having been given to him as gifts, and a few of them were Myka’s, though she chose to keep most of hers secreted away in her room so that she could pour over them at any given opportunity.

“Well then, we’ll just have to make sure he doesn’t catch us.” Myka rolled her eyes, a deep green in the afternoon light, and turned to once more gaze out of the window. The stone of the wall was cool against her side, Spring not yet ready to give way to summer, but she wasn’t cold. The dress she wore – chosen very specifically in honour of King Arthur’s visit – had so many layers to the skirt that being cold wasn’t likely something she would have to worry about unless a sudden snow storm hit.

“Pete, you say that **every** time.” She heard him shuffling behind her and eventually felt his presence at her back. He poked her, just once, in the shoulder.

“And yet you still say  **that** like it’s somehow going to change the outcome.” She can hear his grin in his words and knows she’s already been convinced, but hefts a dramatic sigh anyway before spinning to lean against the wall so she can look at him.

“You’re a terrible influence on me.” His grin only widens and he shrugs, the bright white lapels of his gold-trimmed jacket shifting with the movement. Myka follows the swaying movement of golden tassels and wonders if he likes wearing that stuff. It’s shiny at least, all gold buttons and flashy embroidery.

“Just don’t tell my dad.” He winks at her, grabbing her hand, and then their off to pillage the kitchen.

* * *

 

Myka’s home is a sprawling mass of stone that history has taught her is neigh on impregnable. People have tried, though not in her lifetime, and failed to breech the walls and there’s some sense of security, she supposed, in that. She’d never had need to fear for her life, but should that someday be the case, she believed that the unbreakable integrity of her home would ease her worries.

The inside of the castle was a different story. Littered with hidden passageways and secret tunnels, she and Pete have spent hours exploring them. Seeking out new ones and pretending to be hermits of a kind in others, pulling in blankets and bits of bread and cheese behind them so that they might spent the night. Something they only managed to do once or twice, because it was very dark inside them and Pete was very concerned that Myka might suddenly become afraid during the night and give herself an injury. Myka had of course seen right through the excuse, but let him maintain his pride on that occasion.

When she looked down from one of the high windows, she imagined that she could almost see the edge of their kingdom. The land laid out before her was so vast, she felt as though she could see everything. Her father had ensured she be taught all about their boundaries and how large an area their family governed and though Myka had so very little vested interest, she remembered everything she had been taught. Sometimes she would stare down towards the nearest town and imagine what it must be like, to live in a place where you were allowed to do as you pleased and had seen outside the walls of your home. Myka had never been beyond the gardens and though she knew that the lives of her people were so terribly meager when compared with her own, she still found herself longing for the small freedoms they had.

The right to say no, even just to what they’d been told to wear that day. The right to work for the things you owned, selfish as that might sound to one who had not had everything given to the on a silver platter. Myka knew how lucky, how fortunate she was, she simply wished that there was more to her life. More than being told how to dress, how to act, what to say and who to marry.

“Betrothed?!” The word ripped itself free of her throat as a harshly betrayed whisper. One that did not need volume in order to fill the immense space of the main hall. Her parents sat side by side on their thrones, an image she had seen a thousand times, but today her mother looked stiffer than usual, her father stricter and more determined. As though he had spent his morning preparing for a fight. She stood at the bottom of the steps that lead to the platform on which they sat, staring up at them as though they had lost their minds. She would not let his preparations go to waste.

“Yes, betrothed.” Her father’s rigidness leaked into his voice to turn his words tight and uncomfortable. “Promised, intended, affianced-”

“I  **know** what the word means, father.” She cut in effortlessly, her anger sliding through his sentence like a knife through hot butter. “It’s the audacity with which you conduct your business decisions and the idea that I’ve been foolish enough to consider myself beyond political reach that has me confused.” He stared her down, unblinking, and she did not flinch. “Did you sell me to the highest bidder, father? Extend my hand towards the palm that has touched the most gold?”

“Enough!” His voice filled the room, rebounding off the stone walls and echoing into all corners. “Daughter or not, you will speak to me as your King.” Myka let out a mirthless laugh and lifted her chin in defiance.

“Then I am just another servant for you to command, your majesty.” The title left her lips like a curse, a poison, and she saw her mother tense in her periphery. But she remained silent, timid beneath her husband’s shadow. “Just another problem to overcome. Though I imagine I won’t be for long.” She crossed her arms over her chest, hugging them tight to her body, and the action was so unseemly that she saw her father visible grimace at it. And she smiled. “Will I at least be meeting my future husband prior to the wedding day?”

“You already have.” He ground out. Then, as if on cue and just as Myka’s eyes began to widen, the huge wooden doors to the hall were inched open in a manner that was entirely unsuited to the enormity of the moment, and King Arthur stepped into the room, his son close behind.

When Pete lifted his gaze to search for Myka, she found him looking as sullen and as helpless as she felt. His expression was drawn and serious, gone was the good cheer and mischief that usually lit his features, and she felt a pang deep within her chest.

And she knew something had to be done.

* * *

“Since birth!” Myka’s eye twitched. It wasn’t the shrillness of his tone or the volume of his voice that caused the reaction, but rather the fact that Pete had been repeating the same statement on and off for the last hour.

“If you say that one more time, I’m going to make you wish you had never been born at all.” She said, all sweetness and murderous intent.

“Well at least we wouldn’t be in this mess then.” He lifted both hands to either side of his hand and rubbed the palms over his short hair. “I can’t  **believe** they never mentioned this. I mean, your dad sure,” he gestured towards where she sat – in the plush, red armchair that he’d dragged to sit before one of the windows in the library when he was thirteen and Myka had been so ill all she had wanted to do was sit and watch the clouds roll by – “but mine?” Myka rolled her eyes at his delusional disbelief. King Arthur was by no means similar to her father in terms of character, Pete wasn’t always the sole reason that she was happy for their visits, but he was still a King. One who wanted what was best for his people, rather than what was best for himself. His kingdom. His lasting legacy and living wealth. From a political standpoint, it made sense. She and Pete being wed would merge two of the strongest forces in all the land, forging an unstoppable alliance that would undoubtedly see both kingdoms prosper.

But Myka hated politics.

And if anyone tried to make her kiss Pete, she was going to show them exactly how unladylike she could be.

“I guess it could be worse though, right?” She dropped her hand away from where her fingers were massaging her temple and opened her eyes. He was smiling softly at her. “I mean, if I’m going to be forced to marry anyone,” he shrugged, a little uncomfortable, “I’m glad it’s you. Because I… I mean, I… you know. And I’d do anything for you anyway, so it won’t even be that much different. We’ll just get to see each other more.” It was the sincerity in his voice that momentarily stole her breath. The undying loyalty with which he spoke. He was the greatest friend she’d ever had, the only friend, and despite what he said, that was being taken from her now.

She dropped forward and let her head fall into her hands as sob of despair worked its way free. It wasn’t fair.

“Hey, don’t do that.” Immediately, he was at her side, crouching down and brushing her hair back away from her face. “Mykes, look at me.” With a sniff, she let her hands fall and straightened enough to meet his eyes. He ran his fingers through her shoulder length curls and she watched his lips curve into a smile. A smile that began to shift the longer she looked at it, until it more closely resembled a smirk, which usually meant only one thing where Pete was concerned. “I think I have an idea.”

* * *

Running away, typically, is a thing that children tend to grow out of or become bored with after the first few times. Most never make it very far, down the street or halfway into the woods before they get scared and return home. They usually come to release that the home they left behind actually wasn’t as terrible as they’d decided in the heat of the moment and scurry back up the pathway to the front door with their tail between their legs.

As a Princess, Myka never had the opportunity to run away. She was never permitted to leave the grounds and the desire to try had never really struck her hard enough for her to attempt such a thing. Pete had continually asked her over the years whether or not she was curious about the outside world and, while she admitted that yes of course, she was fiercely curious about what lay beyond the walls, she had always told him that she would get the chance to leave them one day. When she was Queen.

As it turned out, she didn’t have to wait that long.

She knew every guard within the walls. Knew their posts and their schedules, and remembered their habits with little effort.

“Your brain is freaky, you know.” Pete whispered as they rounded the corner, having just waited for a guard to disappear inside the bunk house to retrieve a flask that he forgot without fail every night before darting across the courtyard. Myka flashed him a patronising grin, then glanced around the side of the stone pillar they were hiding behind. She’d tied her hair back and swapped her gown for a pair of dark brown slacks and a thick, dark green tunic that she’d borrowed – “Stolen!” as she was continually reminded – from Pete. He had changed out of his usually finery into something similar and they each had leather sacks slung over their shoulders. Into them they’d put things that they needed for the immediate journey; some food, whatever coin they could lay their hands on, an extra shirt and a few other things.

“Yeah, well. It’s my brain that’s going to get us out of this.” She was right, he knew it, and so he said nothing for the moment, instead choosing to simply follow without smart remarks and with his hand resting readily on the pommel of his sword until they reached their final blockade. The latched door inlaid into the stone of the outer wall that was used primarily for trade and merchant deliveries. It made for easy transportation of goods to the kitchen, which was on that end of the castle. It was the perfect escape hatch, but it was also guarded at all times by two of her father’s soldiers.

“What’s your plan for these guys, then?” He whispered. They were crouched behind a line of berry bushes, green leaves dappled with brilliant orange berries. Myka parted her lips to speak but held off, instead tilting her head towards him to confirm her niggling suspicion.

“Are you seriously eating right now?” He widened his eyes at her annoyed disbelief and pointed an accusatory finger at the nearest bush.

“They’re right there! Defying my father makes me hungry!” She frowned, but let it go for the moment, focusing on the two guards in their way. She brushed her fingers over the dirt at their feet until they touched the smooth edge of a rock and then sent her gaze around the courtyard, looking for a suitable target. She spotted a handful of shovels that had been lined up along the fence outside of the stables and cocked her arm back, ready to throw. “Mykes, that’s way too far, you’ll never be able to-” The thunderous clatter that interrupted him made him jump and he swivelled his head around to see every one of the shovels now lying on its side. His gaze flickered towards the guards who, having both been spooked by the loud noise, cautiously approached the area with drawn swords. They made their break for it, dashing across the short distance to the door and fumbling with the latch for a few tense seconds before Myka managed to get it open. The metal scraped noisily together and she knew the guards had to have heard, but she pressed on, throwing the door open and ushering Pete out ahead of her before pulling it closed behind her. Then it was a treacherous trek down the worn dirt path and an off road shortcut into the thick cluster of trees that provided cover for the castle that Myka was finally leaving.

They heard the distant calling of the men they’d hoodwinked but neither stopped to look back and before long, the night had swallowed them 

* * *

 

When Myka woke, it was to the sound of birdsong and the scent of lavender. She and Pete had run as fast and as far away from the castle as they could before her would be Prince had started to complain about his lungs requiring more oxygen than he could gather at such a pace, and so they’d taken shelter beneath a tree that boasted thick foliage for the night. Myka had lain awake for hours though, staring up at the twinkling stars that winked down at her from between the leaves and wondering what this meant for her. For Pete. Were they to be labelled traitors to the crown? Would their fathers send the cavalry out to find them and drag them home? Her father wouldn’t rest until she was brought to kneel at his feet, she knew that, and she worried what he might do to Pete in the event that they were found.

Sleep had eventually found her though, the remnants of which she rubbed from her eyes as she sat up and immediately winced against the crick in her neck.

“Oh my god, I think I slept on a rock.”

“At least you didn’t wake up to a spider crawling over your face.” Pete was jabbing his sword tip at the embers of the dying fire that he’d built the night before – one thing he apparently could do better than Myka, to his immense delight – and Myka’s eyes popped wide open at the mention of spiders. She hastily scurried to her feet and began rather violently brushing her hands over her clothes, eyes scouring every inch of her body and its immediate vicinity. She heard Pete snicker and glanced over to find him hiding a smirk behind his hand.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything!” He protested, but scooted over to make room for her on the dead chunk of tree he was using for a chair.

“I can hear you thinking it.” She sighed and ran her fingers through dishevelled hair, pulling out a twig that had become tangled around a few strands. She threw it onto the charred remains of the pile they’d gathered for the fire the night before and watched as is disturbed a section of ash, knocking it to the ground. “I’m starving.” She muttered when her stomach decided to make its dissatisfaction known to anyone within a hundred foot radius. Pete reached down behind the truck with one hand and pulled his pack into view, loosening the leather strands that held it together. Out of it he took a haphazardly wrapped loaf of bread and a more neatly contained bundle of cheese. He handed them both to Myka.

“Go crazy.” She flashed him a small smile of thanks and went about unwrapping the food, tearing off a chunk of the bread crust. Pete made a face. “I hate the edging. When I was a kid, my mom would cut it off for me.” Myka’s lips twitched towards a smirk.

“You always were a great big momma’s boy.” He protested with an indignant “Hey!” and shoved her shoulder. “The crust is my favourite.” She popped another piece into her mouth to prove her point and then tilted her head to the side so that her hair brushed against his arm. “Plus, it gives you curls.” She sing-songed and he laughed. He’d seen her playful side before – they’d been friends forever so he’d seen most of her sides actually – but there was something different about her that morning. A new shine to her eyes.

“So that’s you’re secret. If we can market that, we’ll never have to worry about money.”

“Yeah, about that…” she trailed off, chewing the piece of cheese she’d bitten off and swallowing before speaking again. “Do you actually know how to get to the city?” He blinked at her, slow and outrageously offended.

“Of  **course** I know.” He scoffed, indignant. “Did you think I’d just lead you out beyond your walls for the first time in your life and land you lost in the wilderness, with no idea which way is north or which trail-”

“Oh my god.” She yelled over him, staring in disbelief. “You have no idea, do you?” He held up a finger.

“It was dark and I couldn’t see which way we were going or which path we were on!” Her gaze dropped to his finger and he drew his hand back in fear that she might bite it off in a fit of rage. “I swear, I’ll get you to the city.” Myka sighed but bit off another pieces of bread and proceeded to chew it rather aggressively.

He’d have to make good on his promise, otherwise he would never make it to the city either and they’d find pieces of him scattered across all four kingdoms.


End file.
